-LRB- Fast Company -RRB- -- Have you ever created a Genius playlist on iTunes or set up a station on Pandora ? Just plug in one song , and you instantly hear music that matches your tastes .

Think of Zite , the free personalized iPad magazine that launched today , as the Genius playlist or Pandora of news discovery -- but with one noticeable advantage : Zite is smarter , at least for now .

Developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia 's Laboratory for Computational Intelligence , the technology behind Zite can learn your reading habits and personalize content based on your interests .

When first opening the app , Zite will immediately begin personalizing your experience . Link a Twitter account or Google Reader , and Zite will analyze -LRB- not simply display -RRB- your feeds to create a magazine tailored to your interests . You might get sources you know , you might get content you want from sources you do n't know .

-LRB- And yes , you 'll occasionally get stories you have no interest in -- just tell Zite and it catches on pretty quickly . -RRB-

After adding my Twitter handle @austincarr , for example , Zite learned my tastes and created relevant sections -- entrepreneurship , gadgets , social media . It then culled news items from fitting sources -- Fast Company , Wired , TechCrunch , Fred Wilson 's blog .

As I skimmed through the news , Zite began learning my preferences . What specifically do I like about social media ? Was I interested in long-form journalism ? Did I enjoy straight-news items or editorials ? Features or analysis ? Popular sources or niche blogs ? The more feedback Zite collected , the more personalized it became .

`` It 's a combination of semantic - and statistically based machine learning , '' says CEO Ali Davar , of Zite 's content algorithm , the technology of which has been in development for years . `` It works by looking at the articles you click on and the characteristics of those articles . Is the article longer or shorter ? Is it skewed toward one element of a topic or another ? Is it a political blog ? If so , does it have have a right - or left-wing slant ? ''

Users can tell Zite whether they enjoyed a particular article , whether they liked a particular source , or whether they want more news on a particular topic area . But Zite can also learn from a user 's `` soft '' yes 's and no 's . Skip over a news brief ? Zite counts that as a soft no . Did a headline catch your eye and get you to read the longer story ? Zite counts that as a soft yes .

News will soon narrow from , say , articles on food or sports to thousands of specialized sections such as news on vegetarianism or skiing . Users can select these topics on their own , but Zite is best at autosuggesting them -- after playing with the app for a week , Zite began featuring `` Graphic Design & Typography '' as one of my top news sections . Would I have thought to add that category on my own ?

According to the Vancouver-based company , Zite is the first iPad news reader `` to go beyond manual customization . '' Other popular readers -- Flipboard , Pulse -- require users to manually provide sources , whether media outlets or RSS feeds . Zite automates that process and continuously refines content so it 's fresher and dynamically tailored to one 's interests .

`` The difference between Flipboard and Zite is that with Zite , your sections are actually personalized , '' Davar says . `` On Flipboard , you pick sections and sources to customize your magazine -- that 's what they call ` personalized . ' But that 's really ` customization . ' In essence , personalization is a technology -- it 's something that learns from you . So , for example , your technology section and someone else 's will look very different based on your behavior -- rather than being the same generic thing that everyone else is seeing . ''

Still , loyal Flipboard fans might find the app just a bit more elegant , or feel the apps serve different purposes .

Since Flipboard features only hand-picked sources , the app is arguably very personalized : Just as one might only subscribe to New York magazine or The Economist in print , one might only be interested in subscribing to those mags on Flipboard -- and less interested in reading similar content from other sources .

In this sense , Zite , with its endlessly fresh content culled from a wide range of media outlets , is more akin to a digital newspaper , whereas Flipboard -LRB- especially with its far sexier and sleeker design -RRB- feels more like a digital magazine .

But when it comes to `` personalized '' content discovery , Zite follows in the same impressive footsteps as Pandora and Netflix -- and certainly gives Flipboard a run for its money .

`` The underlying philosophy of our algorithm is : You are what you read , '' Davar says .

Copyright © 2010 FastCompany.com , a unit of Mansueto Ventures , LLC . All rights reserved .

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Zite can learn your reading habits and personalize content based on your interests

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`` It 's a combination of semantic - and statistically based machine learning , '' says CEO Ali Davar

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Flipboard and Pulse require users to manually provide sources